New Delhi: In a development that has stirred the mathematical world, two researchers have taken a route to unlock hidden patterns in prime numbers – one that blends old wisdom with unexpected tools.

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

Update, Jan. 4, 2018: On Wednesday, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search announced that a computer owned by Jonathan Pace in Germantown, Tennessee, discovered a new prime number. At 23,249,425 ...